About the Book

Originally published in 1967, this remarkable pictographic history consists of more than four hundred drawings and script notations by Amos Bad Heart Bull, an Oglala Lakota man from the Pine Ridge Reservation, made between 1890 and the time of his death in 1913. The text, resulting from nearly a decade of research by Helen H. Blish and originally presented as a three-volume report to the Carnegie Institution, provides ethnological and historical background and interpretation of the content.

This 50th anniversary edition provides a fresh perspective on Bad Heart Bull’s drawings through digital scans of the original photographic plates created when Blish was doing her research. Lost for nearly half a century—and unavailable when the 1967 edition was being assembled—the recently discovered plates are now housed at the Smithsonian’s National Anthropological Archives. Readers of the volume will encounter new introductions by Emily Levine and Candace S. Greene, crisp images and notations, and additional material that previously appeared only in a limited number of copies of the original edition.

Author Bio

​Amos Bad Heart Bull (1869–1913) sought to preserve the story of his people through ledger drawings. He began his picture history during the 1890s and continued to add and revise his record until his death. Helen H. Blish (1898–1941) was a trained ethnographer who also taught high school English in Detroit between her visits and research trips to the Pine Ridge Reservation. Mari Sandoz (1896–1966) is the noted author of Cheyenne Autumn,Old Jules, and Crazy Horse: Strange Man of the Oglalas, all available in Bison Books editions. Emily Levine is an independent scholar. She is the editor of Josephine Waggoner’s Witness: A Húŋkpapȟa Historian’s Strong-Heart Song of the Lakotas (Nebraska, 2013), winner of the American Historical Association’s J. Franklin Jameson Award. Candace S. Greene is an ethnologist in the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. She is the coeditor of The Year the Stars Fell: Lakota Winter Counts at the Smithsonian (Nebraska, 2007).

Praise

"A Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioux was published in 1967, instantly becoming a landmark volume of Native history and art, a status that it retains five decades later. Until this month, however, [the text] could only be found in libraries, private collections and, for a price, at booksellers. . . . To remedy that and celebrate a half-century of the book, a 50th Anniversary Edition of A Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioux has just been published. On shelves for a little over a week, the 648-page volume . . . reproduces and augments the original with newly reproduced images of the drawings and a pair of introductory essays."—L. Kent Wolgamott, Lincoln Journal Star

“The significance of Amos Bad Heart Bull’s work to our understanding of Plains Indian history cannot be overstated. It is an unparalleled Native account documenting Oglala Lakota life during the tumultuous period of the 1860s to the 1910s. This anniversary issue provides both enhanced illustrations and additional context from the past fifty years, making it even more valuable to the Native and scholarly communities and everyone interested in American Indian art, culture, and history.”—Christina E. Burke, curator of Native American and non-Western art at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma

Table of Contents

Publisher’s Preface for the new edition A Short History of Amos Bad Heart Bull and Helen Blish, by Emily Levine Significance of the Ledger Drawings, by Candace Greene

Chapter I The Artist and His Work Chapter II Dakota Histories and Historical Art Chapter III The Bad Heart Bull Manuscript as History Chapter IV Bad Heart Bull as an Artist Chapter V Dakotan Art and Thought